I’d like to take a moment to say a big thank you to all our sponsors who help keep Mac OS X Tips running. We have such a great group of sponsors at the moment, so it’s definitely worth checking them out:

• Fantastical - One of my favourite new Mac apps that provides a fantastic new way to access your calendar from the menu bar.

• MacKeeper - A great app that combines a number of utilities to keep your Mac clean, fast and reliable.

• DropKey - A super simple app for securely sending files with state-of-the-art encryption and no need for passwords.

• justcloud.com - A free service for storing your files in the cloud, so you can access them anywhere, at any time, from any device.

• Breffo - Innovative stands and podiums for your iPad and iPhone.

• Full Control - Remote control your computer from your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.

• Focusupply - Parts and accessories for iPad and iPhone including colour conversion kits.

If you are interested in sponsoring Mac OS X Tips, please see our advertising page.

1Password is my favourite tool for managing my passwords. It help keep all my accounts secure by letting me use randomly generated passwords for every service so if one is compromised, all the others are still safe.

I’ve always thought that I’ve been using 1Password in the quickest and most efficient way possible. When I get to a login screen on a web site, I simply press Command-\ (or click the 1Password button in the Safari toolbar), type in my master password if needed, and voilà, I’m logged in.

However, Brett Kelly recently shared a “Super sweet 1Password trick” that allows you to skip out the login page altogether by adding a bookmark to your bookmarks bar that performs the entire login process for you.

Start by opening the 1Password app, and find one of your commonly used logins from the list. Then just drag the login into your bookmarks bar in Safari (or whichever browser you prefer to use).

What have we just done? Try clicking on the newly created bookmark — you should see the web site load as expected, but then 1Password automatically fills out your username and password and logs you in. This means you can log into your most commonly used web sites with a single click!

If you haven’t typed in your master password in a long while, 1Password will prompt you for this before logging you in. But this is still quick (just type the password and press enter) and is clearly a good security measure.

iCal has been completely overhauled in OS X Lion - here are 8 tips to help you take advantage of all the new features.

Create a quick event

iCal now has a a great new way to add events that means you no longer have to spend ages filling out dates and times with fiddly controls. Instead, just click the + button in the toolbar or press Command-N to bring up the Quick Event popover. This allows you to type in the event details in a human-readable form — for example, “Movie at 7pm on Friday” or “Meeting at 3pm until 6pm” — and iCal will interpret what you mean and create an event.

Specify times in the event name

When creating events by double-clicking a day in month view, the new default behaviour is to create all-day events. If you want to create a normal event, just specify the time when typing in the event name. iCal seems to be quite flexible at interpreting what you mean - things like “Gym at 6” and “4pm Meeting” will both work.

You can also specify the length of all-day events in this way. Just type “Holiday until Saturday” or “Jim away until the 14th”.

Remove the leather effect

The new look and feel of iCal was one of the most controversial changes when Lion first came out, provoking outrage amongst many UI purists. If the new look isn’t for you, there are a couple of simple tweaks that will change things back to normal. First, if you just want to remove the torn page effect from the bottom of the toolbar, the Big Bucket Development blog shows you how to achieve this by replacing a single image. Alternatively, if you want to get rid of the new look completely, MacNix has a simple method that can bring back the aluminium look in both iCal and Address Book.

It’s worth making a backup of iCal before trying either method, just in case you ever want to revert back to the new leather style.

Show more (or fewer) than seven days in week view

This is a “top sekret” feature that requires a quick trip to the Terminal before it can be accessed. Start by opening the Terminal app (located in Applications/Utilities) then paste in the following line and press return:

defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu YES

Quit and re-open iCal, and you should see a new Debug menu in the menubar. In this menu, under the Top Sekret [sic] section you’ll find an option to set the number of days in week view to 7, 14, 21 or 28 days. You’ll need a pretty large screen for these options to be that useful.

It isn’t necessary to enable to debug menu to show fewer than seven days in week view. First make sure you aren’t in week view, then just hold down the Command and Option keys and them press and number between 2 and 6.

Open multiple calendar windows

This is another secret feature hidden in the debug menu (see above). Once the debug menu is enabled, it is possible to open up multiple iCal windows by selecting New Calendar Window or by pressing Command-L. This is great if you would live to have two different views open simultaneously — for example separate weeks, or a month view and a day view.

Adjust the font size

It’s now possible to change the size of the text in the calendar view. Just choose Make Text Bigger or Make Text Smaller in the View menu or press Command-minus (-) or Command-plus (+).

Year view heat map

The new “year at a glance” view is fancy, if not altogether that useful. It allows you to see a “heat map” of how many events you have throughout the year, with busier days shown in red and quieter days show in yellow. Double-clicking any month will bring up the month view for that month.

Set as Full Screen

iCal is one of only two apps that I regularly use Lion’s full screen mode with (the other being Terminal). This allows me to leave it always running in the background, out of the way. Whenever I need to check my schedule or reminders, a simple four-fingered swipe to the left will slide the desktop across to iCal running full screen in its own space. To set iCal as full screen, just click the full screen button in the top right corner of the window. You can even combine this with the multiple calendar windows tip to allow you to swipe between multiple full screen calendars that show the current day, week and month.

It’s always been possible to install and remove your own custom preference panes in System Preferences, but until Lion, the default Apple-provided preference panes were there to stay, whether you used them or not.

Now, in Lion, it’s possible to hide any icon in System Preferences, including the Apple ones. To do this, just go to the View menu and choose Customize. A checkbox will appear next to each of your System Preferences icons, allowing you to turn off the ones you don’t regularly use.

As well as giving you the ability to remove the default preference panes, this also has the benefit of allowing you to hide your own custom preference panes without completely uninstalling them. If you do occasionally need to access one of the hidden preference panes, they are still all accessible from the View menu or by right-clicking on the System Preferences icon in the Dock.

Another new customisation available in Lion is the ability to sort the icons alphabetically, instead of by category. Without the category names taking up space, this gives a nice, slightly more compact System Preferences window. Just choose Organise Alphabetically from the View menu.

Bonus tip: It is possible to quickly switch between preference panes by clicking and holding on the Show All button. This causes a drop-down menu to appear with a list of all your preference panes (including hidden ones). This is pretty much the same as what is in the View menu, but might save you a few milliseconds by being a little bit closer to your mouse cursor.

A lot of people have complained that the login screen is too bland and boring in Lion - it now sports Apple’s new favourite grey linen texture. Fortunately, it’s not to tricky to make some customisations. It is possible to change the background, add a custom welcome message and display system stats. Find out how below.

Changing the background

In Lion, the background used for the login screen is located at

/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/Resources/

The easiest way to get to this folder is to choose Go to Folder in the Go menu while in the Finder. Then just copy and paste in the above line and click Go. The image that is used for the background is NSTexturedFullScreenBackgroundColor.png. You can replace this with any other image, and as long as you give it exactly the same name, it will be used for the login screen background. Before you make any changes, make sure you make a copy of the original file somewhere safe so you can go back to it if you want.

You’ll notice that the image is only a small 256x256 pixel square — this is because it is automatically tiled across the screen. If you want to use a similar type of texture, any size image is fine. However, if you would like to use a full size image without tiling, you need to make sure the image dimensions exactly match your screen and the resolution is 72 dpi. Either way, it must also be in PNG format like the original. It’s pretty simple to use Preview to adjust any image to the correct size and format.

Display a short message

Before Lion, displaying a message on the login screen was a complicated process that involved entering commands into the Terminal. Luckily, Apple have now added an easy way to set a message using System Preferences. To do this, go to the Security & Privacy preference pane, and under the General tab, tick the checkbox Show a message when the screen is locked then add your message. Only about the first 200 characters you enter will be displayed, so make your message short and sweet.

Display system stats

In older versions of Mac OS X, simply clicking on your computer name in the login window would cycle through displaying lots of useful system information. Unfortunately this feature has been removed in Lion, but you can bring it back to a certain extent. Open up Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities), paste in the following line and press Return:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo HostName

Now when on the login screen, clicking on the time in the top right will cause the computer name to appear, followed by the OS version and build number, followed by the IP address.

Display a login banner

Apple has a great article over on their support site on how to display an agreement window where users must read and click Accept before logging into the computer. This is really useful for people who manage lots of Macs in a school or company with an “Acceptable Use Policy” that all users must agree to.

To do this, just create a file in TextEdit that contains whatever text you want to display. You can embed images and use whatever text styling you want. Once you are done, save the file with the name PolicyBanner in the Security folder in the Library in Macintosh HD.